New wonder material to rival graphene?

A team from MIT believes molybdenum disulphide (MoS2) could enable new electronic materials and devices, including clothing with embedded electronics and glasses with built in displays.

While molybdenum disulphide has been used in used in industry for many years as a lubricant, it wasn't considered to have application in electronic devices. However, scientists at the Swiss university EPFL produced a transistor on the material last year and the MIT researchers now believe it has the potential to rival graphene.

Yi-Hsien Lee, a post doctoral student at MIT's department of electrical engineering and computer science, found a way to make large sheets of MoS2 using chemical vapour deposition. Graduate students Han Wang and Lili Yu then set about producing building electronic circuits on the sheets. The researchers have made a variety of basic electronic devices on the material, including an inverter; a NAND gate; a memory device; and a ring oscillator.